Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rascal who wrote (26216)	8/24/2003 9:45:06 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

The president's prevarications on Iraq -- and their consequences. ______________________________________ Eight Lies By Michael Tomasky Web Exclusive: 8.21.03 prospect.org Imagine that, after the failure of the health-care bill in 1994, Bill Clinton had come right back in 1995 and proposed the measure again. No, not only proposed it again but proposed a more radical version, arguing that it failed only because it was too watered down, and tried to bully its critics with reckless gunslinger talk about how they didn't care about the future of America. Virtually all of Washington would have thought Clinton ready for the loony bin under such circumstances. And yet this is exactly the m.o. of the current White House. Like one of those M.C. Escher prints in which water tumbles through an endlessly circulating sluiceway but ends up back where it began, Bush administration policy -- in Iraq and on other fronts -- operates on a logic that permits neither facts nor criticism nor other opinions to disrupt its precious flow of water to nowhere. The logic goes something like this: The White House lies and propagandizes. An ever-pliant media gobble up the lies and propaganda. At some point, the lies and propaganda are laid bare and result in failure or crisis. And then -- this is where Escher comes in -- the administration uses its own failure to argue that the crisis just proves that the public must support Bush all the more! Iraq and the blackout, the leading international and domestic crises of the week, are both examples of this. With regard to Iraq, there are at least eight major lies the administration has told that put us where we are today: 1. It said Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States. He was not. 2. It said he sat on massive caches of weapons of mass destruction, which he was ready to employ at a moment's notice. He apparently did not and he obviously was not (or he would surely have used them when the infidels hit his soil). 3.It said regime change would be a cakewalk. It was for two weeks -- during which time the administration naturally showed the tastelessness to gloat about it -- but it sure isn't now. 4. It said our soldiers would be greeted as liberators. They were for about two days; now they're "greeted" as occupiers. 5. It said it had a solid postwar plan. It didn't. 6. It said toppling Hussein would hem in terrorism. Instead, for now at least, terrorism has spread, as extremists of all stripes swarm into Iraq, where our soldiers are paying the price (four more were injured Wednesday morning, after the United Nations bombing). 7. It said the death of Hussein's sons would slow the bloodletting. Violence has increased (and the same will surely happen if Hussein himself turns up dead or captured). 8. It said we don't need more troops on the ground. A pipeline bombing and a hotel bombing later, it's pretty obvious that, as depressing as it is to contemplate, we need more troops on the ground. Only one thing ever said by the White House is true, which is that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. That he was. And so now, eight lies later, the administration falls back on this rhetoric, which is obviously the Republican National Committee's No. 1 talking point: Would you rather (as I heard a few testy wing nuts say on television yesterday) that Saddam Hussein still be in power butchering his people? This is the question of a demagogue, a shill or an idiot (not groups in short supply these days, unfortunately). But it's scarcely as if supporting this administration to the hilt or being soft on Hussein are the only two alternatives here. A third alternative -- consisting of three or four more months for the UN inspectors (does the administration's timetable really seem that urgent in retrospect?), a second UN resolution, the backing of the Security Council, an honest rather than a dishonest casus belli from the administration and then, if necessary, a war (and yes, I would have supported war under those circumstances) -- is looking better every day. On the blackout, no, it's not the administration's fault, and there is no equivalent catalogue of lies that contributed to it. But what the administration and its allies in Congress are doing now is shocking. There's fairly broad bipartisan agreement on the portions of the administration's energy bill that have to do with updating transmission lines. There are differences in the House and Senate versions, but they're not so great that a deal can't be cut. If that came up by itself, it could pass both houses in a matter of days. It would at least begin to address a problem that has obviously hit the crisis point. But the White House and its Republican allies don't want that. What they want is to take a situation, which they and their ideological soul mates in the various states helped create through hurried deregulation, and use it to force oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) -- which the administration, for now, is insisting be attached to the bill that would update the transmission lines. They'd rather keep the ANWR provisions in the bill and have it fail, so they can then blame Democrats next year, than do something about the problem. Fine, let them do it. And then let's see how it plays in Michigan and Ohio. Iraq or the energy grid, it's always the same with these people: They put ideology ahead of facts and use their own failures as evidence that they should be given more license. It's time someone took their license away. __________________________________________________ Michael Tomasky will become executive editor of the Prospect in September. His columns appear on Wednesdays at TAP Online.

To: Rascal who wrote (26216)	8/24/2003 10:04:35 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Protesters Near Bush Ranch Demand Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq __________________________________ by David Jackson Published on Sunday, August 24, 2003 by the Dallas Morning News CRAWFORD, Texas – The ongoing, emotional debate over Iraq came to President Bush's doorstep Saturday. While protesters near the presidential ranch in Crawford urged that American troops be brought home from Iraq, Mr. Bush called the troops' effort there a major offensive in the war on terrorism. "There will be no flinching in this war on terror, and there will be no retreat," Mr. Bush said in his weekly radio address. Among those gathering at the local football stadium to denounce both Mr. Bush and the war, four days after a terrorist bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, were relatives of troops. "George Bush does not support our soldiers," said Candance Robison, whose husband is an Army lieutenant in Iraq. "He lies to our nation and our soldiers about our reasons for going to war. He makes thoughtless statements like, 'Bring 'em on' to the Saddam loyalists who target our troops." Ms. Robison is part of Military Families Speak Out, one of the groups that sponsored the protest. Veterans for Peace also helped organize the rally, which drew about 100 people. As songs were sung and speeches delivered, the critics carried signs that read: "Bush says 'Bring 'em On' – Instead, let's bring them home;" "Get That Unelected Warmonger Out of the White House;" and "Richard Cheney – Get The Halliburton out of Iraq." Some protested the extended tours of duty in Iraq and cuts in veterans' benefits. Others cited continuing guerilla attacks on U.S. soldiers and the failure to date to find weapons of mass destruction, calling the entire rationale for the war into question. "We have recently found out the reasons weren't exactly truthful," said Christyne Harris, who has a son-in-law in Iraq. "I think the morale is sinking." Bush administration officials have said evidence indicated that Saddam Hussein continued to seek weapons programs in defiance of U.N. sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War. During his prerecorded radio address, Mr. Bush said Iraq was on its way to becoming a "stable, self-governing society," and "this progress makes the remaining terrorists even more desperate and willing to lash out against symbols of order and hope, like coalition forces and U.N. personnel." "A violent few will not determine the future of Iraq, and there will be no return to the days of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers and mass graves," Mr. Bush added. The president also condemned last week's suicide bombing aboard a bus in Jerusalem, saying Palestinian terrorists are undermining their people's hopes for an independent state. He urged Palestinians and Israelis to continue to work together toward peace. "A Palestinian state will never be built on a foundation of violence," Mr. Bush said. The Bush critics who journeyed to Crawford had various opinions about the president and what course he should take in Iraq. Some protesters, who endured a brief rain shower, accused Mr. Bush of lying to justify the war, while others said he was only mistaken. Some called for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, while others urged the administration to seek U.N. help in stabilizing Iraq. But all said they wanted their loved ones back as soon as possible. "We're not going to stop until we get our soldiers home," Ms. Robison said. "And it's going to get bigger and bigger." © 2003, The Dallas Morning News commondreams.org